‘I’ll go up and do my homework.’

‘Aye son. Do that.’

He picked up his school bag and left her sitting at the table with the three untasted cups of tea.

After a while she called him to come down and they ate their tea in silence. Her eyelids were red and ugly. A bomb went off over in the direction of the city. The china on the table clattered for a moment and the bulb above them trembled at the end of the flex. Still she didn’t speak. Her mouth tightened and she glanced quickly across the table at him. That was all.

‘Bring your books down here. It’s cold in your room,’ she said, when he had finished eating.

He found it hard to concentrate with her in the mood she was in. Normally she would be busy around the place, or balanced, rather than sitting, on her chair, bent over the mending, her hand groping out over the table from time to time for her scissors or the thread. Now she sat, staring at nothing, her hands lying exhausted in her lap. He tried, unsuccessfully, for a long time and then laid his pen down on the table in front of him.

‘It’s not Brendan you know, Mam. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?’

‘What do you know about it, or what I’m thinking? Get on with your studies.’

He turned to the middle page of his exercise book and wrote out the poem about the cat. He looked at the words for a long time, aware constantly of his mother’s gauntness across the table. A poem must have substance. Kathleen had said that to him once. Be more than a word picture. How can words have substance? That was something you could hold in your hand. His fingers clenched on his substantial pen. He thought of the cat, unblinking on the deck, and its stretching legs, claws pricking for a moment into the wood of the deck, its sleek sides plumped out with food and confidence.

His mother sighed.

He drew two lines diagonally across the words, crossing each other in the middle like the lines on a flag. The insubstantial cat existed no longer. He would have to remember to pull out that page before he got to school. He shut the book and reached for his school bag. He gathered up the books on the table and packed them neatly into it. He fastened the frayed straps.

‘Are you through, son?’

Her voice startled him. He had almost forgotten that she could speak.

‘Yes.’

‘There’s no sign of your Daddy.’

‘No.’

‘He must have found someone to have a drink with.’

‘Yes.’

‘He’d have been home otherwise.’

‘Yes.’

‘Leave off your shoes and I’ll clean them for the morning.’

He took them off and left them on the chair. The lino was cold through his socks.

‘Night, Mam.’

‘Night, son.’

She didn’t move from her seat.